I've been here since Saturday and I can understand why this place inspires poets, composers and authors. It is not a place that people come "to" but rather it is a place that remains with you when you leave
Everyone who visits takes Iona home with them.
The shorelines, with their craggy rocks and water-smoothed shores are reminiscent of Nova Scotia. One can easily see why so many Scots were happy to settle on the Canadian shores when that new land opened up. Us humans are comforted greatly by the familiar.
On my first real foreign trip in 2005 to Israel I almost sqealed in delight at seeing the rooster on a cereal box and knowing for sure that it was corn flakes even though I couldn't read the print. My eyes have been seeking the familiar, the recognizable, ever since.
In leaving Glasgow on Saturday I tried to decipher what I was seeing by comparing it to where I have lived and what I know. The industrial part took me back to Hamilton and the tenement buildings had me recalling some of the seedier parts of Toronto. (Having said that, I do hope those conditions have improved!)
Once in the country side, away from the buildings and busy-ness of the city we drive through a place that looked like the Finger Lake region of upstate New York. While the heights were slightly shorter the green, lush forests were the same. I saw the cattle and the sheep grazing on a low hillside and was back at Juniors farm near Bradford New York.
The mountains that we travelled through as we wound our way ever westward to the coast, well, they were Foothills.  Living beside the Rockyountainse has spoiled me for anything else - except may be the Alps (and they're on my must see list...)
So, are we ever truly where we are? I mean are we ever truly present in the geographical place where we find ourselves or are we always longing to he somewhere else?
When I am home do I long to be away?
When I am away do I long to be at home?
When I am somewhere new do I want to be somewhere more comfortable, more familiar?
And when I am somewhere well known do I dream of the exotic?
At the welcoming service in the Abbey Church - where the acoustics made the congregation sound like a glorious choir - the homilist said that some who travel to Iona are running from something and that some who come are seeking to find a future. But the truth is, whereever we go, there we are.
Or as the Newfies would say, whereever you are, there ya be.
Escape is not an option. Whether you are running from something - a regret, a mistake, a loss or a grief ot you are running towards some imagined future better than your past you are leaving behind... wherever you are, there ya be.
So we'd best some time getting comfortable with ourselves.
The City of Glasgow is just Glasgow and has no need of being Hamilton or Toronto. The thing hills are beautiful in their own right and are definition of "pastoral". And the mountain ranges are mountains that reach up to the sky as far as this land of Scotland needs them to reach.
And the shores of Iona are the shores of Scotland and not of Nova Scotia.
And I am here, in this place, in moment.
Wherever I am, here I be.
I am in Iona and for that, thanks be to God.